Open-Minded Healing
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Open-Minded Healing
Marie Crews - Surviving Immense Grief and Finding Connection Beyond Death, Through a Structured Journaling Process
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A blank page can feel like a cliff edge—especially when your life has been torn open by loss. Author and coach Marie Crews joins us to share how a simple, structured journaling practice helped her survive her son’s death and uncover a grounded path back to connection and peace. What started as morning pages became a reliable dialogue with a wiser voice, one that didn’t sugarcoat the pain but expanded the story with context, compassion, and courage. We walk through Marie’s four-step method—Reveal, Review, Rewrite, Rewire—and why each phase matters. The reveal is raw truth without censorship. The review identifies pain points and beliefs that keep suffering in place. The rewrite offers a kinder, reality-based narrative that includes your limits and strengths. And the rewire uses rehearsal and witnessing to turn insight into a new nervous system pattern. This is trauma-aware, practical, and deeply human work that serves divorce recovery, creative blocks, midlife shifts, and profound grief.
Marie also opens the door to her retreats, including specialized gatherings for mothers who have lost a child. In those rooms, validation becomes medicine and connection becomes a bridge to ongoing bonds that don’t violate faith traditions or demand a specific spiritual label. We talk about identity shifts, self-love as a daily practice, and why the answers we chase are already inside us—waiting to be revealed on the page.
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You can find Marie Crews at:
Website - https://www.mariecrews.com/
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Welcome back to Open Minded Healing. My guest today, Marie Crews, is going to be discussing how transformative her signature journaling process can be when it comes to navigating painful events in your life and how it can be effective even when people are not finding success in traditional therapy. As simple as the idea of journaling sounds, Marie's particular process has the capacity to help you find answers within yourself when suffering serious setbacks in your life or experiencing the deep grief that comes from losing a loved one. Marie will dive into her own experience dealing with the devastating loss of her child and how this journaling process saved her and allowed her to connect with her son in a profound way. Welcome to the show, Marie. Hi, thank you for having me. Well, before we get into the specifics of your signature journaling process, I want to know who are some of the people that could benefit from journaling. What types of pain points can be touched upon and healed through this process?
Marie Crews:I would say anyone with a pain point because the whole point is that we have our own answers and all we have to do is reveal them. And journaling can be revealing what the answer is to the next level of your healing or to the next thing that you need to learn or grow into to alleviate some of the suffering from the pain point. So it could be divorce, midlife, empty nesting. I don't think we give that enough credence, you know, grief in any way. You know, I've been working with a lot of moms now who've lost a child and seeing some pretty incredible things come out of it. So here's what I've found. I started out coaching, using the process with women who were entrepreneurs and they were trying to find their way to get out of their own way. And in order to do that, we had to know what that meant to them individually. So that's where I started. And now years later, I've discovered that those underlying issues were unresolved emotions from divorce. They were current realities, raising children that are difficult, um, empty nesting, "single momming", big grief, loss of parents, spouses, siblings, children. Now I've crossed into that, unfortunately, fortunately, whatever we're calling it today. So anyone with anything that's presenting that they don't know what to do with can benefit from journaling. And I would say the biggest misconception or the thing that I've come against the most that stops the process is someone believing they need to be a good writer. But you're able. And if you're willing, you will find yourself on the pages of the journal.
Marla Miller:That's a good point that some people think they can't journal because they're not quote unquote writers.
Marie Crews:Or they, because they're not a writer, they haven't enjoyed journaling, right? And then it's like blocking this whole channel of your inner world that you could expose and then heal. So that's the thing I'm trying to really get across to people. You can be a terrible writer, but if you can write on a fourth grade level, you can do this.
Marla Miller:So you mentioned just shortly back about how you've crossed over into something yourself. You said whatever we're calling it these days, whether it's good or bad. What were you referring to?
Marie Crews:Oh, uh, the loss of my son. I've crossed over into helping moms, working with more mothers who've lost children. And so that's what I meant by whether it's good or bad. Like it's bad that I lost him. It's good that I'm doing the work, you know? And it depends on my moment, what I'm calling it, because some days it's bad. It's really bad, and I hate it. And some days I'm just grateful that I'm willing to do the work so that other people's suffering can be alleviated and they can find their own peace and joy and allow it to coexist with this really great grief that we carry. So was this more recent?
Marla Miller:When did this happen?
Marie Crews:Well, I lost my son in 2017 in November. So it's we just made eight years. The timeline is I lost him. I started to write my first book seven months after he passed. I'm a creator, so I had lost my mother tragically 20 months before I lost my son. And that had given me this window into what I can do with grief is metabolize it through creativity. So I created a business and I was already a creator. I'm an entrepreneur, and I was already a coach. What losing my mother taught me about me was that I could move through grief through creativity. So it was instinctual, probably survival, that I started to write my first novel seven months after I lost my son. And then I went to aerial arts not long after that. I was a dancer and a tumbler, but I was 44 or 46. I forget. I wasn't your prime candidate for aerial arts, but it was a way I could just get out of my mind. Anyhow, what has happened since is 18 months after I lost him, I started running women's retreats, and it was focused on business, entrepreneurial ship, uncovering what's holding you back. And then I had people outside of that paradigm that wanted to come to retreats. And so then I just kept building. And then recently I've gotten into running retreats exclusively for mothers, which is its own different experience entirely. And uh, I just needed to heal enough. I didn't even want to do it. But you know, when the calling keeps calling, here we are.
Marla Miller:Well, was your first book? Did it have to do with grief, or it was something totally different? The subject.
Marie Crews:My first book was uh a fiction, but heavily based on my life. So my first book, I think, was a journey inward for my own survival. It was probably a carefully crafted self-help book, but it's fiction for some really specific reasons, so that I could be more open. So the book is about my life and how I got to be in my first marriage, what it was like to raise my son, who was really a difficult child. He was just brilliant and all these things, and what that looked like in my terrain. And I think my overarching goal for that novel was to have people bring in some compassion for like how would someone who is now highly successful, you know, I created my own six-figure business and I was coaching all these people. How could someone like that have the life I had? And how could they have the life I had and end up where I was after deep grief? So it was mainly for me, it was just brewing in me my whole life, this book. So that's what my first book was about.
Marla Miller:That sounds really fascinating, and it sounds like self-analyzing your life, looking back and being like, why did I do it this way as opposed to that way? And correct. How did I make it?
Marie Crews:What it revealed when I decided to put journal entries into the book, that's when I saw, like from the thousand-mile view, how the journaling had been my private therapy. My therapist said at some point, your journaling has become your meditation because I would meet myself in the pages and I would hear from my higher self, literally, which I didn't tell anybody for months because I thought they're going to lock me up.
Marla Miller:So maybe you can explain that a little bit. How were you hearing from a divine source?
Marie Crews:It was, it just happened. I mean, I started with the book. There's a book called The Artist Way by Julia Cameron. And my daughter gave it to me. So my daughter was in college and she gave me this book for Christmas. And she is an artist, she's uh an artist, meaning she's a vocalist and an actor and all that. And so she was searching, she was really young, searching. And she said, Mom, I really think you'll like this book. And the book is geared toward helping you find your creative genius and how we all have it, and that our art is our channel of the divine through us. Now, her language is different at the time. I was much more biblically based, God-based. So I started just journaling. So when I see the journals I was writing, creating the book, it was like it coalesced, right? It just sunk in. Like, oh, I don't have just a journaling practice. I have a process that I'm doing that I didn't understand. But what that process looks like is coming home to yourself, owning the parts of you who didn't get it right, and giving much more credence and credits to the parts of you that did, because we don't give that to ourselves. And so then we withhold the healing by not giving it to ourselves. None of this was conscious. Like I'm just doing what I'm doing. She gives me the book, I start journaling, and I become a journaler, which isn't a word, by the way, which is baffling to me. But I become a journaler and I write three pages every day, which is what this book wants you to do, to get in the habit of journaling, not I'm meeting pain on the paper, I'm meeting myself regularly on the paper. So Julia Cameron's book, The Artist Way, encourages daily journaling as a habit. Stream of consciousness, just what are you thinking? Put it on the paper. What happened was what I started to notice was at some point I was getting a response to my journaling.
Marla Miller:So as you're writing and you're saying I'm struggling, say, with this grief or with whatever it is, all of a sudden you continue writing and you're getting an answer.
Marie Crews:So not like question, answer, question, answer, like dump and then answer. It just happened involuntarily. I allowed it to come, but I noticed and I said, Oh, this is much like meditation or prayer when people hear from God. And I thought, oh, God, which was my only term at the time, God, the divine or whatever, is talking to me and reminding me of who I am in my good nature, right?
Marla Miller:Can you give an example of that, maybe? And also, did the language change? Did you look back and you're like, I wouldn't have said that to myself?
Marie Crews:Absolutely. I wasn't capable of that much compassion for myself at the time. I I had done therapy, therapy, therapy, and I just wasn't there yet. And this was a benevolent, this wasn't like you did it all perfectly. This was real. This was like, yes, I see your struggle. Yes, I see you messed up. But here's what's underneath it, and that was more important, and it healed me. It literally walked me back to myself again and again. So I let me think if I could just give you an example. I'm gonna think about like my first marriage. Like if I wrote about it and I'm just like pissed off. If I was writing, I was just mad because my ex-husband was not showing up for my kids or where he was hurting them or whatever. Let's say I'm dumping that, right? And maybe in that writing, ridiculing myself for staying with him so long, for not getting out sooner, for not healing sooner, whatever, right? So I'm dumping, but I'm also dumping about my part. This other piece would say, well, you didn't just decide, you had brokenness in you, which made you be with him, which made you stay with him out of fear. Like it gave the rest of the story, and the rest of the story is the healing part of our story, and so it just happened on the paper, and I didn't tell anybody because I thought God's talking to me, and something is, and it was always loving and caring and kind, but real. And I was afraid because I had no frame of reference for woo-woo. I had Christian-based religion and I had other and I didn't touch other. I wasn't that girl. Vanilla as they come. I read astrology for fun here and there, but like I wasn't into none of it. It was either this or that, and if it was that, I wasn't into it. So this starts happening, and I'm like, oh, holy hell! Like I'm not telling anybody. I literally don't know how long it took, probably months before I told one person who I just trusted, and she was speaking a little bit in this language. And I remember thinking she'll understand it, and the very least, she won't judge me and think I'm crazy. And I'm a very open person. Like I would have told the world if I didn't think it was truly nuts, or that they would think I was nuts. And I was kind of scared I was nuts, you know. It took until I wrote the novel to see it like that. I didn't understand. I started running these retreats and I was trying to teach this journaling, but didn't see the process I was doing. So I'm just trying to teach them to journal to find themselves, but not how to heal themselves. So I started to teach the journal and it's not sticking, they're not getting it. So then there was another event that came up that I was uh working with a couple of coaches, and I pulled this process together. And I wasn't saying, let me create a process. I was just like, how can I get them to get this? I didn't know it would turn into a four-step process and that I would use it anywhere other than at the retreats. And so that's how this got born, which is still to me baffling. Like that literally came through me, and all I did was show up.
Marla Miller:What were the steps you were finding when you really looked back at your writing?
Marie Crews:And the steps are you you dump, you write. Um, and I call that the reveal. And I've changed the names because these are more accurate for what I do. The reveal is like a stream of consciousness, and the next step is the review. So now we're looking at the reveal and we're looking for pain points. We're looking for what needs love and attention, forgiveness, acceptance. Where are our pain points? That's the review, and then we have the rewrite, which I had to create a very unique way of circumventing the fact that we often can't love ourselves. So I did, I created a very clear way to get around that until you can. And it always happens. And some people it happens rapidly, some people take a lot more time because their resistance, their own traumas. And then the last part is the rewire, and rewire is accomplished through rehearsal, through practice, just like anything else. You know, we got neuropathways, and the only way we can change them is to lay new neuro pathways down and practice like a bike rut. The only way you're gonna stop riding in that rut is to carve a new path. And that path isn't easy to carve, but once it's carved, you won't go back into the other rut. And that's the same way with rewiring our nervous system.
Marla Miller:Yeah. So when you're teaching people at these retreats, say your four-step process. So the first part, the reveal and they're just stream of consciousness, and that's doable for sure. When you teach people and allow their minds to go free instead of censoring themselves.
Marie Crews:And I have really specific techniques to get that unlocked.
Marla Miller:Oh, that's good.
Marie Crews:Like it's just like anything new. You don't go on a piano to learn how to play, you start with ABC or whatever the keynotes are on a piano, which I don't play piano. You just start with like something that's not really threatening to the mind. Because if you start big, people will be like, no way. So I just start small and they get a taste, and then we keep building throughout the four days.
Marla Miller:As far as the step where you got divine words on paper that didn't feel quite like yours, are you getting people to hear that for themselves, or you're getting them to do it with their own words?
Marie Crews:I'm getting, yes, I'm showing them how to do the rewrite psychologically first.
Marla Miller:So it's like in a conscious way.
Marie Crews:A totally conscious way, because most people, what happened to me did not happen because I chose it. It happened. And that's the only path to it, right? Like if you sit down and meditate or pray and you try to create God's words to you, it's not God's words to you. So you can't try to do what comes, but it will come if you do the part you can do, which is psychological emotion-based rewriting, looking at what you said and asking yourself if it's true. So there's a process that you cross, but there's another piece that you have to circumnavigate. Like it's really hard for some people who have lived through a lot of trauma, a lot of emotional abuse to see themselves any other way than the story that shows up on the paper. So to have them write to themselves in a loving way, they don't know how. There's no frame of reference because often they've never done that. Because we're taught, especially as women, don't give yourself too much credit, don't be arrogant. Well, that's where the medicine's at. That's where your emotional healing lies in seeing yourself as human and doing your best, even when it looks like you're not. And that's just a long process. It's not a long process, but it's too in-depth to really go into how I do that, but it's brilliant and it works. And I'm not saying I'm brilliant, I'm saying the process is brilliant, and it works every time. I haven't had anyone who cannot do it.
Marla Miller:So you teach them how to first reveal their thoughts, and then you have a specific way of helping them reframe what they've written. Correct. So it's kinder and gentler and more forgiving for themselves.
Marie Crews:Yes.
Marla Miller:Yes. And then after that, when they've learned how to rewrite the story in a positive way, what is the step after that?
Marie Crews:The rewiring. So on scene at a retreat or working with me in small groups or one-on-ones, the rewiring is the reading it, hearing it, being witnessed, being validated. So when someone shares, I say, who else in this room has had that happen? And I'm not talking about an event. I'm talking about their mindset. Who else believes this about themselves? And when we get validated that we're just normal, we're human, we're all having the same experience, different parts and pieces, and some worse. Than others, but when we get that, it's like permission to heal. I never used this word before, but it feels like magic, but it's not like it's just medicine, it just works and it's unbelievably successful.
Marla Miller:So is the story that they're telling in front of everyone at the retreat, is it the reworded story? It's the whole process. They talk about the negative things they wrote about, as well as they read the whole thing.
Marie Crews:They read the whole thing. I used to be scared of saying that because I'm like, people aren't gonna come. But here's what happens we create a little bubble of security. Everybody else is there because they're also in emotional pain. So it's not like embarrassment because we're all struggling. When it's just the moms, it is the thing that they need to know that everybody in the room has had this level of loss. They don't have to protect anyone's emotions. They don't have to protect anyone in that room from their experience. They're moms. So they've been protecting their whole world and all the closest people to them that don't get it, they're protecting them because this is bigger than anybody can imagine. The enormity of the pain and the process that you're going through.
Marla Miller:So, do you find that at your retreats you're mainly dealing with people that have gone through serious grief? Or, like you said, it's all grief. I mean, divorce can be considered grief. No, I no.
Marie Crews:What I've done is I have two separate categories now. I have one retreat called Define the Gravity of Grief that is for mothers who've lost a child only. The only people in that house are those of us who've lost a child. The other one is still an amalgamation of any kind of suffering that you're looking to alleviate, rewire. So there's both, but they are now separate. And I do encourage my moms to come to the mom's retreat. It's a different level of healing. I've had one lady came to the first kind, and then I didn't have the other one jet. And so then she came to the other one. She was like, this is next level.
Marla Miller:So can you give an example of by the end of the retreat? How are people feeling? What's the transformation? Do you stay in contact after the fact? How does that work?
Marie Crews:So the moms, what they leave the retreat with is much closer of a way to connect with their child, feeling like that's normal and healthy and part of their healing.
Marla Miller:You're talking about moms who have lost a child specifically.
Marie Crews:That's my define the gravity of grief retreats are just for mothers who've lost a child, adult or juvenile, no one else. Like there is no other specific group I'm working with. I'm just uniquely qualified for that group, unfortunately, right? But they leave understanding a better connection, understanding we all have a non-physical part of us, and that their child is just non-physical now, but they didn't die in the sense of gone nowhere, that there is an availability for connection. And I did this on the spot, but created some avenues into that, how we can loosen the psyche enough to open the portal. And I'm not saying portal in a woo, I'm saying like open the doorway to be able to get in there. Because you know, our mind is so powerful that we have to get around it a little bit. So they leave with that, but they leave feeling like they've been seen, like they've been hurt. All of the women leave. I'm not unusual, I'm not unique in my suffering. And those are good things because otherwise you think you're suffering because you're crazy or you're alone or you're whatever. So it creates this human recognition that just doesn't happen. Even in therapy, unless your therapist has been through what you've been through, there is not a human recognition. There is and there's not. I've been through therapy years and years and years. So I'm not taken away from that, by the way. If that's where you start, great. Start somewhere, do something, you know. If I had to sum it up like with a different perspective of who they are, and identity shifting is the answer. So they leave just believing, like seeing for the first time sometimes the goodness and the grace they deserve. Most of the time, you've just been busting your butt and you're just exhausted. Permission to be human is permission to heal. So that's what they leave the retreats with. And it's I'm still sitting off.
Marla Miller:Are they leaving with a process of journaling that allows them to connect with their child?
Marie Crews:Well, the ones who are open to it, all of the women will leave with a process to connect to themselves. The point of the retreat is like it kind of locks in and gives you some self-efficacy about the process. So you kind of tell, like, I could do this if I wanted to. I actually know the value of it. And then I do offer small group packages. So then I'll work with three or four women on one call. We're still mirroring, we're still validating, everybody reads. We do the same thing as we do in the retreats. And it may not be the same women you were at a retreat with, but you know, going in that the women here are here for healing, which makes it very safe. So it just depends on what someone needs. People leave and they say, change my life and I never journaled again. And people, my hope would be that they use it as a practice of self-healing because it's free and you could do it whenever you want, as much as you want, as much as you're willing to look and heal. So it just depends on what someone wants. And then I'm preparing to create some groups where I'm gonna go live within the group and do the work live with people who've already been to a retreat. Like they then get to go in the group, and that will be maintenance or whatever. It's like, okay, let's take the training wheels off, but let's still give you some support. And then I also work with one-on-one. Some clients are just, I want a whole hour to do as much work as I can do, just me. So it just depends on what someone feels like they need.
Marla Miller:Well, I could see how the grief, and specifically, you know, those moms that have lost a child. That seems like such an underserved community because those people feel like they're.
Marie Crews:Months. And I remember thinking, if he can talk to me, because he kept talking to me, I heard him. He's the one who walked me through the PTSD of finding him. It is so beyond. I really just need to write a book about it. But in the months later, when I started to write again, I thought, well, if I can hear him, you know, and it's not auditory, it's just a note, it's a something. If I can hear him there, then he can talk to me on the page because I was already hearing from God or the universe for years, right? And so I let him. And I'm about to write another book, so I need to go dig that journal up because I'm going to put it in its entirety in the new book. But when I went back and read it, it wasn't me. The things I wanted from him did not come out on that journal. You know, like the things I would have created did not show up, just like that day. He wouldn't have said, Look, mom, I'm free. He would have said, I'm so sorry. I didn't know you were gonna find me. He would have explained it. He would have said it was a mistake, he would have said a million things, but that wasn't it. And so that just changed everything. Everything moving forward changed. My entire emotional and spiritual life is different. Let me say that. I'm still married to the same man, I'm still the same fiery, sassy woman that I've always been, but my entire landscape of my spirituality and my emotions changed the day he left. So now I'm just pulling all of that and saying, listen, if I can live through this and I can find my way back to joy and peace and let it coexist with this great grief that nobody ever wants to live through, then you can do it. That's not to say that your divorce didn't gut you. It's not to say that it's less than, it's like application. Like if I can do it with this, let me show you how to save yourself. Let me show you how you can do this. And so now I'm telling the stories and sharing the process and walking women home back to themselves, to their healing, to God, whatever they believe in, you know.
Marla Miller:The story of your son, Quentin, right?
Marie Crews:Yeah.
Marla Miller:I love how you call him Q. That is something yeah, that so many women can identify with. I mean, unfortunately,
Marie Crews:Yes.
Marla Miller:And as you say, this applies to everything. If you can delve into a pain as great as the one you've experienced, then you can apply this method to absolutely anything going on in your life. I mean, because I would say that's got to be the biggest thing.
Marie Crews:I'm in a group with parents. This is all things I've learned, but I've in a group with parents who've lost other very important people in their lives, and they've also lost a child. So they lost their spouse because I haven't lost a spouse, right? Well, my first husband committed suicide seven months after my son. So it's been a whirlwind, but I haven't lost my husband, who's my life right now. You know, he's like my person. So I haven't been through that, right? But I lost my mother first. And but it's resounding in these parent groups that they've lost other people and that nothing even comes close. And we know that spousal loss is big, right? I mean, it impacts everything you do for the rest of your life. But these people who have also lost their spouse and their child and a spouse they really loved say, that's tough, that's hard, I couldn't breathe, I couldn't function, I lost my partner, but this is like off the charts next level. It's literally like a part of you, you know? So it's like uh the closest I could come to an explanation so that people can kind of framework it, which is not even close because there isn't a comparison, but it's like if you cut off your right arm, you never ever ever do anything again the same, you aren't the same person. It is a piece of you that is not in the form that you knew them their whole life. And if you don't have a framework for the non-physical, it's like they are vanished. Like I remember thinking those first few days, I remember thinking, where did he go? Like, where is he? What happened? Where is he? And I didn't have a framework, so it was desperation. Like, I just gotta know he's okay, you know? And I mean, it's a million other things too, but the framework in all the moms who've come to retreats, some of them had a framework for the non-physical and some of them didn't. And they left with one, all of them. It was really cool to watch because I didn't really know what was gonna happen at these retreats. I just was like, you got one job, and that is to not lose your shit every time they fall apart, because I was most afraid that my pain would just get involved and get icky. And otherwise, it was just to see what showed up when I walked them through it and meet them. And it is miraculous in a way that's hard to explain because if somebody can leave with a framework of communication of non-physical in a way that doesn't threaten their religious beliefs, that doesn't make it all weird and woo, then they can literally set themselves free through the process. And I'm watching it in real time.
Marla Miller:Well, your journaling began before your son passed. Oh, yeah. Yeah.
Marie Crews:So journaling began about three years before, and I was just a daily, like every single day. I would just get up, I drink my big thing of water, get my coffee, go sit down, and I journal.
Marla Miller:That's what I find so interesting. And I've seen this with other people when they've healed from something, but you backtrack and you see how things were coming together before they. Time. I mean, with you, it's you were already learning how to deal with it yourself, but also even how the retreats came together. You backtrack and you were prepared for that ahead of time. You were bringing in tools, you were preparing yourself.
Marie Crews:I was probably, you know, I think on a soul level, preparing my whole life for this movement, what I have to offer in the aftermath. I'm certain and I'm grateful, like in my bone marrow, grateful that I had a way to be there for myself and to not abandon myself in the grief. You know, we all live in some level of distortion. And so I had a way to clear the distortion when I would write about feeling guilty, or why didn't I heal soon enough? And there's a whole piece to my story that's like my anxiety created this, created that, and like all the things. And why didn't I heal faster? And I was angry and so many things. And I was able to just question it, reframe it, and meet myself on the paper and allow my higher self to meet my broken self on the paper. And it was so magical for me. It was so much medicine that I thought this journaling, people gotta learn this. And so I never really thought about teaching it outside of these retreats. I was running for these business women. I had no intention of running retreats for any other thing other than this business stuff. And then it just evolved. I've moved away from that other business and business mentoring, although I it's all the same. You know, the thing that's in your way in business is the thing that's in your way emotionally, period. It's not separate, it's not that you don't know how to be a good business person. You need healing in your psyche and your emotions to be the business person you can see yourself becoming. So I moved away from that and moved completely into retreats and one-on-one work and group work. And that is what I do now. And we build a house on the coast in Florida, which is where I run the retreats.
Marla Miller:So when did you meet your second husband?
Marie Crews:So that's an interesting story. And I covered all that in my novel that I wrote. I'm gonna do a really super quick timeline. Let me say that my mother raised four kids on her own, no support, no financial support. She had family, big family, great family, but she was just raising us, which was a relative term because I was born in 73. So the 70s, 80s, we were latchkey kids. We raised ourselves pretty much. And so I started dating my first husband when I was just shy of 14 years old, but I was super prematurely mature because of the environment I grew up in. So he was 17, and we start dating, and then we get married when I'm 17, have my first baby almost 19, second baby at 21, all planned, all intentional. It's baffling to me that I was even that person then. I was just trying to heal the life I didn't have. I know now that's what I was doing, right? So when I'm 22, my baby, my Quentin that I lost, when I'm 22, he's one-ish, and my husband moves from alcoholism into crack addiction. And so I'm a baby raising these babies. But what it did was it plunged my maternal instincts, plunged me into therapy, into Al-Anon, into group therapy. I mean, when I say I was insatiably seeking how do I heal myself enough that I can raise these kids because I didn't believe he was going to be okay. So we fought addiction for eight years, in and out of recovery, in and out of hospitals, eight years. I'm keeping the home front, protecting the kids. They know nothing about it. And then finally, he had another relapse when I was 30. And I was done. And I was in college and I didn't even have a job. And I was just like that, done. But I had healed for eight years. I had found myself, I had found my strength. I had found why I was in this loop with this man who I adored, by the way, and he adored me, good hearted man. He was just that brutally broken from a childhood that is probably the worst childhood I've ever seen. He was broken and he wasn't meant to heal this go-round, I guess. So I left him. And then I met my net husband about seven months later. Wasn't looking for a husband because I was like, who would ever do that again? But then I met him and he was my energetic match. My whole soul knew it. And I was like, ah, I did not want to get married again, but I knew I just knew it. Just sunk in within the first six months. And I was like, hmm, and we're still together 21 years later, and really happy I was right about marrying him. And he's definitely been kind of the backbone of me being able to continue to heal and live through these two truly traumatic grief losses.
Marla Miller:Yeah. So the loss of your son must have really affected him as well.
Marie Crews:Yes. Well, he had been around my son from the time my son was nine to 22. Because when we started dating, we really started dating. We didn't get married for a while, years, but he was a part of their lives. He did Christmas with us. I mean, we didn't live together, but we did everything together, and he was over a lot. And he was at every both of my kids were vocalists, and you know, so he was at every concert, every soccer. He was their parent, not from the very beginning, but Quinn was nine. So he was 22 when he passed. So yes, yes, of course, it affected him. But it's kind of miraculous to watch. He's just super, I don't want to say stoic because that makes him seem not who he is. He's just one of the most self-actualized people I've ever been around. So his ability to not collapse is high, and he just keeps the environment at a really safe space, which allowed me to heal and to move through it. I mean, I've worked with women whose husbands are pissed at them because they're not the same person they were. I mean, really, that happens in real time, and I'm thinking this isn't a grief problem. This is you pick the wrong person problem. So I didn't meet him really quickly, but I always say I had done so much work, I was ready. And I had grieved my first husband in that marriage. I mean, I was angry with God. Like I did that much work and it collapsed anyway. And I was very angry, but I had grieved him every relapse. I mean, I had grieved him for eight years. He gave me the framework to grieve him every single time our whole life collapsed again. I grieved and I healed, and then I got strong enough and I said, enough. I can't afford this emotionally one more day. And it was by far the best decision I've ever made for me. By far. Oh, yeah. For besides marrying my now husband. Like that paved the way for that. But it was me standing up and saying, I'm worth enough to choose a different life.
Marla Miller:And I did. I'm so glad you had that kind of relationship that was so supportive during the most difficult time imaginable.
Marie Crews:Definitely. I've thought about women who are single moms that don't have that because it really made a huge difference for me. I've never gone through anything that huge without that. So I don't know what that looks like. But I have in mind to start a nonprofit to where I can help women who are single have more time off of work, get their bills paid for some more time to do healing, you know, because sometimes they have to go back to work in two weeks. I can't even imagine having to take care of little kids while this is going on because you're so dysregulated. So to go out and be with people, I can't even imagine. And I'm a people person, so I want to fill that gap. I don't know what that looks like, but I have a heart for it. You know, I was a single mom. John and I didn't get married for six years. I mean, he was there, but he wasn't paying my bills. But you know what I'm saying? Like I was still independent. So I have a real soft spot for single moms. My mom was a single mom. And not that every other mother who's lost a child that's in a marriage isn't equally as crippled by this loss. I'm not arguing that or suggesting that by any means. It's just something that pulls at me.
Marla Miller:Yeah. Yeah. Well, I can see where you're really helping people in such a strong, amazing way. Well, I'd like to ask people three questions when they've gone through a difficult time and come out the other side, like you have. So, what was the biggest obstacle when you were grieving your son's passing? Hmm.
Marie Crews:I would say my biggest obstacle was that besides the sheer just enormity of missing him and the impact that it makes on everything, all the good things are also tainted because something's missing. The obstacle, though, for me was because I'm an extra extrovert, I didn't realize that I was embarrassed, like I had failed at this thing, and I was very subconscious. I've since healed, I have none of that. But the obstacle was the thing that made me me, which was socialization, talking, processing outward, I couldn't do with this. There was nobody to talk to. There was nobody to talk to that I didn't have to protect from this enormous grief. And even if they were willing and I didn't feel like I had to protect them, they didn't get it. Like there were no women in my world who lost a child. There was one, a distant cousin who I adored, but I refused to call her because I was so scared that she was going to tell me that I was always going to feel like this. And I had to pretend that I wouldn't, or I wouldn't have made it. And I couldn't. And so the very thing that was the fabric of me was stifled by the situation, which made it even that much worse in a way. So it's like losing myself. I lost him and I felt like I lost me. And the thing that brought me joy a lot was being with other people. Well, now I'm embarrassed. I don't want to be with other people. I don't want them to look at me fiercely prideful at the time, just from not healing all the wounds. And I hated when people looked at me like pity, and whether they were doing it or not, that's what my brain was doing. So the biggest obstacle for me was the part of me that was shut down by the loss, by the just the mechanics of who I am. Couldn't I didn't have a space for her? And so then it was like way bigger. You know, like I lost him, and now part of me is gone too. And will that come back? You know, can I find her?
Marla Miller:Yeah, that would be a loss when that's your way of coping or energizing yourself or healing yourself is in that very social way, and then you're not able to do that. What was the biggest lesson you learned through this process?
Marie Crews:Oh that every single thing that we need or want that we're looking outside of ourselves for is in us, it's already in there, and all we have to do is go find it. We have to be brave enough to look and willing enough to sit in it, knowing that when you do, everything you want is there. You know, these women come to my retreats, and I'm not getting them anything, I'm showing them where to find it. I'm walking them through a process that will connect them with their own truth, not go believe this. I'm saying this is what I did, this was my path, this was my experience, but all of it is in the writing. If that's your choice, you know, you're not gonna find anything that's not inside of you. The writing just excavates what's there. The answer is you, the answer is you, it's you, it's you. It's inside of you. That is the medicine. That's what therapists help people do. They help them find themselves inside of themselves. They're just being a reflection, so you can find yourself, your truth, your strength, your dreams, your desires. Like everything's in there. So that's what I got crystal clear on for me. That is the biggest thing that changed, which is now the nature of what I do.
Marla Miller:Well, and also with therapy, which can be so helpful to people if you're with the type of therapist that has done their own work already and then they're reflecting accurately back to you.
Marie Crews:Yes.
Marla Miller:You know, what you're saying or what you're feeling, or what answers you're coming up with, as opposed to some therapists, if they haven't healed themselves and they're reflecting a distorted type of pattern because they're pulling themselves into it. Right. So I can see how the journaling is so effective because it is truly coming from within yourself.
Marie Crews:Totally. And I've done my work, I mean, years and years and years. So when I'm working with someone, I'm truly channeling the questions. It's wild, it's very out-of-body-ish. And people are like, How'd you know that? And I'm like, it's not medium knowing, it's how did you know to ask that question? And I'm like, I've just learned to hone this gift, this clarity. I don't know. I don't call it God. I'm just led and I allow it, and it's unbelievable. I had somebody send me a message the other day and she's like, oh my God, I just want to let you know how much my life has changed in the last year. And she said something about a lifeboat, and I have no recollection of me saying that because I'm just letting it flow through me. And I think that's what other healers are doing. It's not unique to me. I'm just open to allowing it to come through. And I believe that everybody can be like that for themselves, 100%.
Marla Miller:Well, what was the biggest kindness shown to you during this traumatic and healing time?
Marie Crews:Biggest kindness. That's what makes me cry. I'm gonna just trust that this is gonna come across. The biggest kindness was me being kind to myself through it. Me like knowing in the bottom of my soul that if I didn't give myself grace, that I wouldn't make it. And I was determined to make it. So the biggest kindness was my own voice, my own permission to cry, to scream, to rail at God or to be angry. Because I had always was mean to myself for everything I felt because I was trying to survive my life. And I just allowed myself to be me in all of the pain. I allowed myself to tell people, I'd never done this because I was always like beating myself with the head. You know, my internal critical voice was so loud that I allowed myself to say, I can't, I'm busy. And that meant I was busy with me in no apology, and not have to say, I'm having a bad day because I'm crying because my child died. I could just be unapologetically, Marie. And that was the biggest kindness to me was me. I've never said that out loud, but I trust what shows up, and that's a revelation. I just did in real time.
Marla Miller:Yeah, I think that is a universal thing that would heal everyone on this planet, you know.
Marie Crews:So starting with yourself. That's why I'm so upset on teaching this process because that's what you do. You learn how to love yourself for all the facets of your humanity, and the more you love yourself, the less critical you are, the more free you are, the less you do the things that you don't like about yourself. It's literally a self-healing system. And I just didn't realize till just now that that's what I did. And maybe it was because I had already been journaling, so it just showed up naturally because I had been practicing self-love. I don't know. I'd never looked at it yet until just now.
Marla Miller:Well, that's the power of not censoring and just letting something come through.
Marie Crews:So that's well, and I teach that a lot, and people would be like, I don't know. And I'll say, I don't know is not an answer in a loving way. And I have a funny little gong, and I gong them is so fine. We have a lot of fun in the pain, and then I say, if you had to guess, and they always find it, it's magic.
Marla Miller:Yeah, it's the difference between say something that's totally accurate and perfect versus just give an idea. Doesn't it?
Marie Crews:Yeah, what what do you think? Because the answer's inside of you, and if you just ask enough questions, it will surface. And one of them is if you had to guess, it literally unlocks something because now we're just playing, we're just guessing, we're not claiming, we're not knowing, we're just guessing, and that is very disarming.
Marla Miller:Well, that's great. You create the space to really allow these women to come together and community and support and self-love and with an actual tool that moves them forward, not in a way of forgetting someone that they're grieving, but to communicate with the person that they're grieving.
Marie Crews:Yes. If there's any through line, it is just that the answer to every ounce of healing, of restoration, of trauma recovery, of grief, the answer to all of it. I'm gonna say this because grief is a really specific thing, like loss. You can't love yourself into not having lost them. That's the only caveat, right? Because I was mad at first. And if I would have heard that, I would have said, Yeah, well, I can love myself all I want, and I'm not getting them back. Okay. So I want to preface that piece. That loving yourself doesn't give you what you don't have. However, loving yourself is the answer to all of it. And if you can find a pathway to self-love, you will heal. That doesn't mean it's easy. It doesn't mean it's simple. It doesn't mean it doesn't suck. It doesn't mean it's not hard work. But I often say the harder thing to do is to not do it. Because then you're in perpetual suffering for all of the things forever. Or you hide or you anesthetize or you do whatever to escape it, which is what we see. But if you're willing, you can heal every bit of all of it. You are the answer. You are the hero you're waiting for. And we think it's out there. And for a long time, even in my marriage, to this wonderful man, until very recently, actually, I've just healed another layer of identity wound. I was always like he's saving me. And all along it was me saving me. He was just holding space and loving me. He couldn't make me see myself differently. He couldn't make me love the mother that I was, even though it just wasn't enough. Not that it wasn't enough. Quentin wasn't supposed to be here anymore. And I get that.
Marla Miller:I loved that.
unknown:Yeah.
Marla Miller:That it was really you all along.
Marie Crews:It's always us. It's you that goes to the therapist, or you that goes to yoga, or you that sits to journal, or you that talks to your friend to try to find yourself. It's always us. It's the only person that can heal me is me.
Marla Miller:Literally. Yeah. Well, there is another good author that addresses this topic as well: the loss of a child, Suzanne Geisman is her name. G-E-I-S-M-A-N. Yeah, I I know that name. I could have spelled that because I know I've seen that. Well, she writes about when her stepdaughter passes and how devastating that was, and how she desperately wanted to communicate with her and just the whole process. And now she went from being in a top military position and now she's a medium. So I just think people that are grieving the loss of a child, it might be of interest to read her books. But I also want to get into how people can work with you and maybe you can share any books you have out there or that are going to be coming out.
Marie Crews:So the easiest way to get to me is MarieCrews.com and you'll have it in the show notes for the correct spelling. It's C-R-E-W S. And in there, depending on what you're looking for, there's a retreat tab and it has the different two types of retreats. And then there's also if you wait for the little pop-up, I offer a free journal jump start workshop, which is where to start, how to open the armor a little bit so you can start stream of consciousness. But it's I don't think of maybe three hours that I did live with a couple of ladies who signed up. And I offer that for free. And then I do free consultations. There's a form for that. And that would be for all the rest of the work. Because I need to make sure that I'm a good fit for someone because this isn't about money for me. I mean, it's not not about it, you know, but it's definitely not my main front runner. But also on my website are all my socials, you know, they're linked on my website. I've just been really coming out with more material on TikTok, just talking my process. Facebook is my main platform, has always been. And uh, I'm on Instagram, but I'm kind of lagging behind on that. But I'm about to come up with some more onto Instagram as well. So that's how people can find me and our retreats. We hold them in Navarre, Florida on the Panhandle on the Gulf Coast. So it's about as beautiful and serene of a beach that you're gonna find. And you asked about the book. The new book I'm about to write is going to be called Define the Gravity of Grief. And it is going to be what happened, what we walked into. It's gonna be a little background. My first book is the background, and then it's gonna move into my spiritual expansion, my all of it. It's going to show what happened, how I had no framework for woo, and how this devastating event pushed me in that direction, and what has happened since, all the way to where I'm at now, which is a deep, deep level of identity integration.
Marla Miller:So sounds so fascinating. And that book, when would you expect that to be?
Marie Crews:Well, I just started putting the first chapters together. So my goal would be within the year. I'm a different person than the first one. I mean, I was writing this first book through brutally deep grief. So it took me four years to publish it. But this is not gonna be like that because I'm just wide open now, and this is just gonna come. And I'm really comfortable sharing. I was so embarrassed about some of the pieces of the puzzle that I was terrified. What if people know they're gonna think it was my fault? Like so many things, and I've healed so much that I'm like, what worse could happen to me besides losing my child? Somebody thinking bad of me. Here you go. What could happen is way more people will find healing and a path. And I'm much more committed to that than I am keeping myself safe or looking asserted.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Marla Miller:Well, I appreciate you coming on here and sharing not only this effective journaling process, but your own really personal story about your son Quentin and just your whole process, how you've dealt with things and being so open and unafraid at this point, after all the work you've done, to really share it with anyone who will be listening to this. So yeah, thank you so much and for really living your purpose and truly helping people.
Marie Crews:Well, I definitely want to thank you for just opening the platform so we can collectively get more healing circulating, more conversations that can change people's lives, you know, without people giving me an opportunity, it doesn't go any further. So I'm also excited. You were telling me about another guest you just did. And I was like, oh, okay, this sounds like exactly what I need to listen to your podcast. So I'm excited about that too, to be able to kind of tap into what you've already created. So thank you so much.